St. Paul Residents Demand Release of Police Drone Contract With Skydio
Members of the MN Free Palestine Coalition and Women Against Military Madness rallied outside St. Paul City Hall on Oct. 13, calling on the city to release the police department’s Skydio drone contract, end it, and halt expanding AI surveillance. The Pioneer Press reported the contract cost about $300,000, and the coalition says its public records requests have gone unanswered. Speakers raised concerns about racial profiling in communities like Rondo and about Skydio’s sales to Israel. They noted the City Council withdrew a $200,000 federal drone grant application on Sept. 9 after public outcry. The city, police and Skydio did not respond to requests for comment.
St. Paul residents rallied outside City Hall on Oct. 13, calling on the city to release its police department’s contract with drone maker Skydio, end the agreement and stop expanding artificial intelligence surveillance.
Members of the MN Free Palestine Coalition and Women Against Military Madness (WAMM) organized the rally ahead of a public meeting at City Hall. They oppose the St. Paul Police Department’s current contract with Skydio, a U.S.-based drone company, and any future contracts with drone companies they say are complicit in violence against Palestinians in Gaza.
“Violence in the empire is practiced abroad, and has a nasty habit of coming home. It does not stay overseas,” said Wes Sax of MN 50501. “Eventually someone gets the bright idea to try it out on the people back home. That is the imperial boomerang. And if you’ve spent any time around ICE lately, you might have noticed we’re getting a pretty spectacular demonstration.”
Activists said they learned of the St. Paul police contract after the Minneapolis City Council rejected a similar Skydio contract with the Minneapolis Police Department. That contract would have allowed “first responder drones” to be sent out after 911 calls to capture video and audio from the scene. Activists have criticized Skydio over its sales to Israeli forces since 2023 and its federal contracts with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The St. Paul contract has not been made public. The coalition said it has filed public records requests for the contract but has not received it. The Pioneer Press reported that the contract cost about $300,000.
“St. Paul Police Department essentially passed this through without any public hearing or oversight, even from City Council, so we want transparency around the contract,” said Cedar Larson, a St. Paul resident and WAMM member. “There’s a lot of information I’d like to know, like when it ends and how much money it will be taking.”
According to the coalition, the St. Paul Police Department has had a contract with Axon, which supplies Skydio’s drones, since 2023, and approved an expansion of Skydio’s docked drone program this year without a City Council public hearing.
Residents at the rally called on the city not only to make the contract public but to end it, pointing to Skydio’s sales of drones to Israel. Wyatt Miller of the Anti-War Committee described how speakers say the company’s drones have been used in Gaza.
“Skydio built its entire scaled-up business, selling hundreds of these drones to Israel for use in Gaza, where they used artificial intelligence to identify, to stalk Palestinians, to target them for assassinations,” Miller said. “Israel is a testing ground for these technologies.”
Larson and other speakers said they worry the technology will be used to monitor and racially profile residents of Black and brown communities. Larson pointed to Flock cameras placed downtown and in Rondo, a historically Black neighborhood.
“Our own surveillance and autonomy as civilians is being threatened by these drones, and we also know that it’s impacting the most vulnerable among us too,” Larson said. “We don’t think that what they are claiming to use them for is what they’re actually going to be collecting overall in all the data.”
Sax raised similar concerns about artificial intelligence.
“People who are of color have more to worry about,” Sax said. “Especially when you get into autonomous drones, they’re already integrating AI technology for surveillance, but AI still has not been trained well. It is trained mostly on white people, and it doesn’t really know how to behave around people of color.”
The coalition said public pressure has worked before. On Sept. 9, the City Council withdrew a resolution to apply for a $200,000 federal grant to expand the police department’s drone program after public outcry.
“This item is being withdrawn … because the Council does not support the expansion of our drone program until a number of questions and concerns are addressed, and we will not be authorizing this grant application,” Council President Rebecca Noecker said at the time.
The St. Paul Police Department, the city of St. Paul and Skydio did not respond to requests for comment by press time.
Sax said residents should also weigh what companies like Skydio do overseas.
“Our tax money, by way of the federal government, always goes to Israel,” Sax said. “But to have your tax money directly through your city go to a company that helps Israel commit genocide against their community, I just don’t think a lot of people are aware of that.”
Izzy Canizares is a contributing writer for the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder. He welcomes reader responses at isabellacani0102@gmail.com.